1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to telephone private branch exchanges (PBXs) and, more particularly, to a system and method for exchanging "business" information relating to telephone calls between two computers which each receive information from one or more PBXs.
2. Related Information
Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs) are switching devices used by organizations with a need for internal telephone communication and for routing telephone calls from external telephone lines to internal telephones. A PBX may be connected to a switching office of the public telephone network, and multiple PBXs may be tied together to handle a large number of telephone lines.
As technology has improved, PBXs have become more sophisticated, employing computer circuits and data storage facilities to automatically route telephone calls to available agents, and to monitor call information such as the duration of each call. Such PBXs are sometimes called CBXs (Computerized Branch Exchanges) to distinguish them from less capable devices. As an example, these CBXs can be used in an airline reservation system employing dozens or even hundreds of airline reservation agents, whereby a CBX routes incoming calls made to a toll-free number to an available agent. Agents can "log on" to the CBX by entering their log-on ID from the telephone at which they will service incoming calls.
An example of a conventional CBX is the ROLM 9751 family of CBXS, including the models 30 and 80. These CBXs can automatically store information regarding where each call was routed (i.e., which phone line), the duration of each call, the length of time required before the call was answered, and the like. This information, which is stored and accumulated in the CBX over a predetermined time period (such as every 15 minutes), can be retrieved and monitored by supervisors using preformatted data reports. Based on the preformatted data reports, the supervisors can make personnel changes due to changes in the incoming telephone call load.
FIG. 1(a) shows a conventional configuration for combining telephone call information with caller records and a business database. In FIG. 1(a), a first agent 06 operates a first telephone 04 and a first computer terminal 08 to handle incoming telephone calls such as airline reservations or catalog orders. The first telephone 04 is coupled to a first CBX 02, which is in turn coupled to a computer 01 such as an IBM mainframe of various models. First terminal 08 is also coupled to mainframe computer 01 through a record display generator 12 and a data entry program 13. Similar couplings are provided for a second agent 07 with a second telephone 05, a second CBX 03, and a second computer terminal 09. CBX 02 may optionally have a PC 15 coupled thereto for collecting and displaying certain statistics information retained by the CBX, such as the average time spent talking per agent. CBX 03 may also have its own PC 16 connected thereto for the same purpose.
In operation, incoming telephone calls are routed to telephone 04 by CBX 02. When a telephone call comes in and as the call progresses, various "call event" messages are automatically transmitted by CBX 02 to computer 01. A call event may include specific information such as the caller's telephone number, who answered the call, or the like. Call events (such as new calls, call transfers, call hang-ups, etc.) arrive in mainframe computer 01 into event handler 17, which logs the events into event log 18 and routes new call events to a caller look-up function 10, which searches caller database 11 for corresponding information on the caller (such as the caller's account information, latest transaction, medical records, etc.). Upon retrieval from caller database 11, caller look-up function 10 transfers the caller's information to record display generator 12, which generates display information and transmits it to terminal 08 for viewing by agent 06. Thus, the agent can speak to the caller on telephone 04 and have immediately displayed on terminal 08 specific known information regarding the caller. If the caller is placing a catalog order or requesting other services from the agent, the agent 06 can enter such information on terminal 08 through data entry program 13. The new information provided by the caller (such as a catalog order with credit card information) is stored into a business database 14. If caller database 11 does not contain any prior information on the caller (such as the caller's address or social security number), new information may be stored into caller database 11 based on information provided by the caller. The components on the right hand side of FIG. 1(a) operate similarly to those on the left, with a different agent 07.
The conventional arrangement shown in FIG. 1(a) makes it difficult to correlate sales and other business information stored in business database 14 with performance statistics for each agent or group of agents. For example, it is difficult to correlate the average amount of time spent on the telephone by a group of agents with the amount of business generated by the group, because the mainframe's call event information does not include information regarding such groups. There is no mechanism for correlating the numerous other statistics maintained in CBXs 02 and 03 with the business information maintained on mainframe computer 01 or with other organizational information.
For example, it would be desirable to automatically identify the average sales volume generated by a particular catalog department to which a group of agents belongs, or the average number of insurance policies sold for a particular agent during a particular period of time. Even if certain statistics which are stored in each CBX (such as average length of time spent per call per agent) were directly transmitted from each CBX to mainframe computer 01, problems would arise with respect to multiple log-on identifiers per agent, agents moving between CBXs, agents belonging to different organizational hierarchies, and statistics kept across groups of agents. Additionally, mainframe computer 01 could become bogged down with additional data collection and storage tasks, slowing down the other applications running on it. PCs 15 and 16 already provide a certain degree of CBX statistics information locally, and replicating such functions in mainframe computer 01 would be wasteful and possibly duplicative. In short, the arrangement shown in FIG. 1(a) does not allow for easy correlation of the desired information.
In summary, there has been an unsatisfied need to combine "business" related information normally stored on one computer with telephone calling statistics accumulated from one or more CBXs in order to generate reports which cross-reference the collected information. For example, it would be desirable to correlate the average amount of time spent on the telephone for a particular sales agent with the amount of products sold by the agent, and because these two types of information are typically kept in separate computers and organized substantially differently, this has heretofore been difficult.